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Path: utzoo!utgpu!pete
From: pete@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Peter Santangeli)
Date: Sun, 24-Jan-88 01:25:14 EST
Message-ID: <1988Jan24.012514.26587@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Services
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: SH204 hard disk
References: <2697@dadla.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: pete@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Peter Santangeli)

In article <2697@dadla.TEK.COM> jrb@dadla.TEK.COM (Jim Binkley) writes:
>
>
>Also... I have an atari SH20? hard disk and am using the driver
>supplied. Unfortunately for the sake of atari it sits next to a zenith
>150-pc clone running good old msdos 2.2. Said ibm machine has a NEC
>20meg drive and a 1010 winchester controller using the driver buried
>away in the bios or somewhere. "To make a long story short, too late,
>said the man in the audience...", My klunky old pc beats the atari's
>performance on disk writes to pieces. This is curious.  The pc disk is
>currently fragmented beyond belief with about %90 full; i.e., I won't
>buy any reformat and try again explanations. Reading seems to be
>comparable. I recently put together a little piece of code that was the
>equivalent of the unix find utility and read all the directories on my
>15 meg C: partition. That was fairly speedy. Writing is another matter.
>Why?  Flicking the bit that turns off write-verify for "floppies"
>doesn't seem to do any good on the hard disk. Did the supra driver that
>Moshe used do any good on the atari disk?
>

	I believe what Jim has come up against here is the "soon to be as
famous as the 40 folder limit" bug in the file creation system.
	It seems that the programmer who wrote the GEMDOS routine to find
the first free allocation block on a device was as clueless as the guy who
designed the directory system.
	This brings up an interesting idea. Gemdos is certainly a usable
system, but...
	We have a limited number of folders (static).
	My hard drive creates new files slower than my floppy.
	The OS doesn't do any sector level buffering.
These features remind me painfully of my experiences with TRSDOS on a
1977 trs-80!
	Gemdos calls are based on traps. These are notable in that they are
VERY easy to intercept. How 'bout patching the OS to take care of a few of
these bugs? eh? Apple does it with the Macintosh, so there is no reason it
can't be done on the ST. I realise that the desktop being merely an application
is harder to patch, but GEMDOS is quite an easy patching target
	So, how 'bout it Atari? How 'bout releasing patches as they are written
for insertion into our AUTO folders, instead of making us wait for new ROMs?

	Pete Santangeli